World News - School Bus Drivers Join the Boogieman Watch? This is getting sick, more so-called Americans willing to Spy on Fellow Americans.

The war on terror has a new front line - the school bus line. Financed by the Homeland Gestapo Dept, school bus drivers are being trained to watch for potential terrorists, people who may be casing their routes or plotting to blow up their buses. Designers of the School Bus Watch program want to turn 600,000 bus drivers into an army of observers, like a counterterrorism watch on wheels. Already mindful of motorists with road rage and kids with weapons, bus drivers are now being warned of far more grisly scenarios. Like this one: terrorists monitor a punctual driver for weeks, then hijack a bus and load the friendly yellow vehicle with enough explosives to take down a building. An alert school bus driver could foil that plan, security expert Jeffrey Beatty recently told a class of 250 of drivers in Norfolk, Va. After all, bus drivers cover millions of miles of roads. They know the towns, the kids, the parents. Nazi Germany didn’t have so many people spying on other people ... http://www.guardian.co.uk

Two U.S. Democratic senators said on Friday they would introduce legislation aimed at blocking Dubai Ports World from buying a company that operates several U.S. shipping ports because of security concerns.Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Hillary Clinton of New York said they would offer a measure to ban companies owned or controlled by foreign governments from acquiring U.S. port operations."We wouldn't turn the border patrol or the customs service over to a foreign government, and we can't afford to turn our ports over to one either," Menendez said in a statement.P&O, the company Dubai Ports World plans to buy for $6.8 billion, is already foreign-owned but the concern is that the purchaser is backed by the United Arab Emirates government....http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2006-02-17T154012Z_01_N17197464_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-CONGRESS-PORTS.xml&rpc=22

International aid agencies are rushing to help victims of a major landslide in the Philippines, where hundreds of people are buried under mud. At least 19 people are confirmed dead and more than 1,500 are thought to be missing after mud swept over a village on Leyte island, following heavy rains. The US has sent two ships and a UN disaster assessment team is on its way. The Red Cross despatched a plane with basic equipment for rescuers and appealed for $1.5m for relief supplies. Hundreds of homes and a school full of children were destroyed when a mountainside collapsed on the remote coastal village of Guinsaugon. Eighty-three people have been found alive, but rescue officials say between 1,500 and 2,500 more might be under the mud. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4726218.stm

Three senators want the Justice Department to investigate claims that the FBI retaliated against an Arab-American agent by passing him over for top counterterrorism jobs despite his expertise. Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, urged the Justice Department's inspector general to determine whether the FBI denied a promotion to agent Bassem Youssef after Youssef complained about FBI management to another member of Congress, Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va. Specter is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Leahy is the panel's senior Democrat. In a joint letter this week to Inspector General Glenn Fine, the senators warned that ``retaliation for such disclosures sends a chilling message to all employees and thus prevents both the (FBI) director and Congress from receiving valuable information necessary to run and oversee the bureau effectively.'' ...http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5628662,00.html

The US is losing the propaganda war against al-Qaeda and other enemies, defence chief Donald Rumsfeld has said. It must modernise its methods to win the minds of Muslims in the "war on terror", as "enemies had skilfully adapted" to the media age, he said. Washington and the army must respond faster to events and learn to exploit the internet and satellite TV, he said. Separately, President Bush said the US should not be discouraged by setbacks in Iraq and must realise it is at war. "We shouldn't be discouraged... because we've seen democracy change the world in the past," George W Bush said. However, he also used his speech in Florida to claim progress in the war on al-Qaeda. Mr Bush said that slowly but surely the US was finding terrorists where they hid. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4725992.stm

At least nine people are reported to have been killed and several injured in Libya in clashes during a protest outside an Italian consulate. Police confronted protesters who set fire to the building in the port city of Benghazi, in the latest protests over the Muhammad cartoons. They were said to be angry at Italian minister Roberto Calderoli, who had worn a T-shirt displaying the drawings. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has called for his resignation. He said Mr Calderoli - of the anti-immigrant Northern League party - should step down after announcing he would wear a T-shirt bearing the controversial cartoons, which were first printed by a Danish newspaper. Speaking by telephone from inside the besieged consulate, Italian consular official Antonio Simoes-Concalves told the Associated Press a crowd of some 1,000 protesters had surrounded the building. Libyan police tried to keep them back by firing bullets and using teargas, he said. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4726204.stm